CHAPTER XXXIII
AS MINISTER TO RUSSIA—1892-1894
Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White | ||
33.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AS MINISTER TO RUSSIA—1892-1894
DURING four years after my return from service as minister to Germany I devoted myself to the duties of the presidency at Cornell, and on resigning that position gave all time possible to study and travel, with reference to the book on which I was then engaged: "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology.''
But in 1892 came a surprise. In the reminiscences of my political life I have given an account of a visit, with Theodore Roosevelt, Cabot Lodge, Sherman Rogers, and others, to President Harrison at the White House, and of some very plain talk, on both sides, relating to what we thought shortcomings of the administration in regard to reform in the civil service. Although President Harrison greatly impressed me at the time by the clearness and strength of his utterances, my last expectation in the world would have been of anything in the nature of an appointment from him. High officials do not generally think very well of people who comment unfavorably on their doings or give them unpleasant advice; this I had done, to the best of my ability, in addressing the President; and great, therefore, was my astonishment when, in 1892, he tendered me the post of minister plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg.
On my way I stopped in London, and saw various interesting
I confess that I am amazed, as I revise this chapter, to learn from apparently trustworthy sources that his bank is now making a vast loan to Russia—to enable her to renew her old treatment of Japan, China, Armenia, Finland, Poland, the Baltic Provinces, and her Jewish residents. I can think of nothing so sure to strengthen the anti-Semites throughout the world.
A few days later Sir Julian Goldschmidt came to me on the same subject, and he impressed me much more deeply than the head of the house of Rothschild had done. There was nothing of the ennobled millionaire about him; he seemed to me a gentleman from the heart outward. Presenting with much feeling the disabilities and hardships of the Jews in Russia, he dwelt upon the discriminations against them, especially in the matter of military fines; their gradual and final exclusion from professions; and the confiscation of their property at Moscow, where they had been forced to leave the city and therefore to realize on their whole estates at a few days' notice.
At Paris I also had some interesting conversations, regarding
Dining with Mr. Coolidge, I found myself seated near the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld,—a charming American, the daughter of Mr. Mitchell, former senator from Oregon. The duke seemed to be a quiet, manly young officer, devoted to his duties in the army; but it was hard to realize in him the successor of the great duke, the friend of Washington and of Louis XVI, who showed himself so broad-minded during our War of Independence and the French Revolution.
At Berlin I met several of my old friends at the table of our minister, my friend of Yale days, William Walter Phelps—among these Virchow, Professor von Leyden, Paul Meyerheim, Carl Becker, and Theodor Barth; and at the Russian Embassy had an interesting talk with Count Shuvaloff, more especially on the Behring Sea question. We agreed that the interests of the United States and Russia in the matter were identical.
On the 4th of November I arrived in St. Petersburg after an absence of thirty-seven years. Even in that country, where everything moves so slowly, there had clearly been changes; the most evident of these being the railway from the frontier. At my former visit the journey from Berlin had required nine days and nine nights of steady travel, mainly in a narrow post-coach; now it was easily done in one day and two nights in very comfortable cars. At that first visit the entire railway system of Russia, with the exception of the road from the capital to Gatshina,
But the deadening influence of the whole Russian system was evident. Persons who clamor for governmental control of American railways should visit Germany, and above all Russia, to see how such control results. In Germany its defects are evident enough; people are made to travel in carriages which our main lines would not think of using, and with a lack of conveniences which with us would provoke a revolt; but the most amazing thing about this administration in Russia is to see how, after all this vast expenditure, the whole atmosphere of the country seems to paralyze energy. During my stay at St. Petersburg I traveled over the line between that city and Berlin six or eight times, and though there was usually but one express-train a day, I never saw more than twenty or thirty through passengers. When one bears in mind the fact that this road is the main artery connecting one hundred and twenty millions of people at one end with over two hundred millions at the other, this seems amazing; but still more so when one considers that in. the United States, with a population of, say, eighty millions in all, we have five great trunk-lines across the continent, each running large express-trains several times a day.
There was apparently little change as regards enterprise in Russia, whatever there might be as regarded facilities for travel. St. Petersburg had grown, of course. There were new streets in the suburbs, and where the old admiralty wharves had stood,—for the space of perhaps an eighth of a mile along the Neva,—fine buildings had been erected. But these were the only evident changes, the renowned Nevskii Prospekt remaining as formerly—a long line of stuccoed houses on either side, almost all poor in architecture; and the street itself the same unkempt, shabby, commonplace thoroughfare as of old. No new bridge had been built across the Neva for forty years.
A change had indeed been brought by the emancipation of the serfs, but there was little outward sign of it. The muzhik remained, to all appearance, what he was before: in fact, as our train drew into St. Petersburg, the peasants, with their sheepskin caftans, cropped hair, and stupid faces, brought back the old impressions so vividly that I seemed not to have been absent a week. The old atmosphere of repression was evident everywhere. I had begun my experience of it under Nicholas I, had seen a more liberal policy under Alexander II, but now found a recurrence of reaction, and everywhere a pressure which deadened all efforts at initiating a better condition of things.
But I soon found one change for the better. During my former stay under Nicholas I and Alexander II, the air was full of charges of swindling and cheatery against the main men at court. Now next to nothing of that sort was heard; it was evident that Alexander III, narrow and illiberal though he might be, was an honest man, and determined to end the sort of thing that had disgraced the reigns of his father and grandfather.
Having made the usual visit to the Foreign Office upon my arrival, I was accompanied three days later by the proper officials, Prince Soltykoff and M. de Koniar, on a special train to Gatchina, and there received by the Emperor. I found him—though much more reserved than his father—agreeable and straightforward. As he was averse to set speeches, we began at once a discussion on various questions interesting the two nations, and especially those arising out of the Behring Sea fisheries. He seemed to enter fully into the American view; characterizing the marauders in that sea as "ces poachers là''—
He alluded especially to the Chicago Exposition, spoke in praise of its general conception and plan, said that though in certain classes of objects of art it might not equal some of the European expositions, it would doubtless in very many specialties surpass all others; and on my expressing the hope that Russia would be fully represented, he responded heartily, declaring that to be his own wish.
Among the various subjects noted was one which was rather curious. In the anteroom I had found the Greek Archbishop of Warsaw arrayed in a purple robe and hat—the latter adorned with an exceedingly lustrous cross of diamonds, and, engaging in conversation with him, had learned that he had a few years before visited China as a missionary; his talk was that of a very intelligent man; and on my saying that one of our former American bishops, Dr. Boone, in preparing a Chinese edition of the Scriptures had found great difficulty in deciding upon a proper equivalent for the word "God,'' the archbishop answered, "That is quite natural, for the reason that the Chinese have really no conception of such a Being.''
Toward the close of my interview with the Emperor, then, I referred to the archbishop, and congratulated the monarch on having so accomplished and devoted a prelate in his church. At this he said, "You speak Russian, then?'' to which I answered in the negative. "But,'' he said, "how then could you talk with the archbishop?'' I answered, "He spoke in French.'' The Emperor seemed greatly surprised at this, and well he might be, for the ecclesiastics in Russia seem the only exceptions to the rule that Russians speak French and other foreign languages better and more generally than do any other people.
This interview concluded, I was taken through a long
The impression made by the Emperor upon me at that time was deepened during my whole stay. He was evidently a strong character, but within very unfortunate limits—upright, devoted to his family, with a strong sense of his duty to his people and of his accountability to the Almighty. But more and more it became evident that his political and religious theories were narrow, and that the assassination of his father had thrown him back into the hands of reactionists. At court and elsewhere I often found myself looking at him and expressing my thoughts inwardly much as follows: "You are honest, true-hearted, with a deep sense of duty; but what a world of harm you are destined to do! With your immense physical frame and giant strength, you will last fifty years longer; you will try by main force to hold back the whole tide of Russian thought; and after you will come the deluge.'' There was nothing to indicate the fact that he was just at the close of his life.
At a later period I was presented to the heir to the throne, now the Emperor Nicholas II. He seemed a kindly young man; but one of his remarks amazed and disappointed me. During the previous year the famine, which had become chronic in large parts of Russia, had taken an acute form, and in its train had come typhus
In explanation, I was afterward told by a person who had known him intimately from his childhood, that, though courteous, his main characteristic was an absolute indifference to most persons and things about him, and that he never showed a spark of ambition of any sort. This was confirmed by what I afterward saw of him at court. He seemed to stand about listlessly, speaking in a good-natured way to this or that person when it was easier than not to do so; but, on the whole, indifferent to all which went on about him.
After his accession to the throne, one of the best judges in Europe, who had many opportunities to observe him
The representative of a foreign power in any European capital must be presented to the principal members of the reigning family, and so I paid my respects to the grand dukes and duchesses. The first and most interesting of these to me was the old Grand Duke Michael—the last surviving son of the first Nicholas. He was generally, and doubtless rightly, regarded as, next to his elder brother, Alexander II, the flower of the flock; and his reputation was evidently much enhanced by comparison with his brother next above him in age, the Grand Duke Nicholas. It was generally charged that the conduct of the latter during the Turkish campaign was not only unpatriotic, but inhuman. An army officer once speaking to me regarding the suffering of his soldiers at that time for want of shoes, I asked him where the shoes were, and he answered: "In the pockets of the Grand Duke Nicholas.''
Michael was evidently different from his brother—not haughty and careless toward all other created beings; but kindly, and with a strong sense of duty. One thing touched me. I said to him that the last time I had seen him was when he reached St. Petersburg from the seat of the Crimean War in the spring of 1855, and drove from the railway to the palace in company with his brother Nicholas. Instantly the tears came into his eyes and flowed down his cheeks. He answered: "Yes, that was sad indeed. My father''—meaning the first Emperor Nicholas—"telegraphed us that our mother was in very poor health, longed to see us, and insisted on our coming to her bedside. On our way home we learned of his death.''
Of the younger generation of grand dukes,—the brothers
Another of these big Romanoff grand dukes was Alexis, the grand admiral. He referred to his recollections of the United States with apparent pleasure, in spite of the wretched Catacazy imbroglio which hindered President Grant from showing him any hospitality at the White House, and which so vexed his father the Emperor Alexander II.
The ladies of the imperial family were very agreeable. A remark of one of them—a beautiful and cultivated woman, born a princess of one of the Saxon duchies—surprised me; for, when I happened to mention Dresden, she told me that her great desire had been to visit that capital of her own country, but that she had never been able to do so. She spoke of German literature, and as I mentioned receiving a letter the day before from Professor Georg Ebers, the historical novelist, she said: "You are happy indeed that you can meet such people; how I should like to know Ebers!'' Such are the limitations of royalty.
Meantime, I made visits to my colleagues of the diplomatic corps, and found them interesting and agreeable—as it is the business of diplomatists to be. The dean was the German ambassador, General von Schweinitz, a man ideally fit for such a position—of wide experience, high character, and evidently strong and firm, though kindly. When ambassador at Vienna he had married the daughter of his colleague, the American minister, Mr. John Jay, an old friend and colleague of mine in the American Historical Association; and so came very pleasant relations between us. His plain, strong sense was of use to me in more than one difficult question.
The British ambassador was Sir Robert Morier. He,
And here, perhaps, is the most suitable place for mentioning a victory which Morier enabled Great Britain to obtain over the United States. It might be a humiliating story for me to tell, had not the fault so evidently arisen from the shortcomings of others. The time has come to reveal this piece of history, and I do so in the hope that it may aid in bettering the condition in which the Congress of the United States has, thus far, left its diplomatic servants.
As already stated, the most important question with which I had to deal was that which had arisen in the Behring Sea. The United States possessed there a great and flourishing fur-seal industry, which was managed with care and was a source of large revenue to our government. The killing of the seals under the direction of those who had charge of the matter was done with the utmost care and discrimination on the Pribyloff Islands, to which these animals resorted in great numbers during the summer. It was not at all cruel, and was so conducted that the seal herd was fully maintained rather than diminished. But it is among the peculiarities of the seals that, each autumn, they migrate southward, returning each spring in large numbers along the Alaskan coast, and also that, while at the islands, the nursing mothers make long excursions to fishing-banks at distances of from one to two
And now to another feature of the case. Before leaving Washington for St. Petersburg, I had consulted with the Secretary of State and the leading persons in charge of our case, and on my way had talked with Count Shuvaloff, the Russian ambassador at Berlin; and all agreed that the interests of the United States and Russia in the matter of protecting the seals were identical. The only wonder was that, this fact being so clear, the Russian Foreign Office constantly held back from showing any active sympathy with the United States in our efforts to right this wrong done to both nations.
At my first presentation to the Emperor I found him, as
All went smoothly until I took up the subject at the Russian Foreign Office. There I found difficulties, though at first I did not fully understand them. The Emperor Alexander III was dying at Livadia in the Crimea; M. de Giers, the minister of foreign affairs, a man of high character, was dying at Tzarskoye Selo; and in charge of his department was an under-secretary who had formerly, for a short time, represented Russia at Washington and had not been especially successful there. Associated with him was another under-secretary, who was in charge of the Asiatic division at the Russian Foreign Office. My case was strong, and I was quite willing to meet Sir Robert Morier in any fair argument regarding it. I had taken his measure on one or two occasions when he had discussed various questions in my presence; and had not the slightest fear that, in a fair presentation of the matter, he could carry his point against me. At various times we met pleasantly enough in the anterooms of the Foreign Office; but at that period our representative at the Russian court was simply a minister plenipotentiary and the British representative an ambassador, and as such he, of course, had precedence over me, with some adventitious advantages which I saw then, and others which I realized afterward. It was not long before it became clear that Sir Robert Morier had enormous "influence'' with the above-named persons in charge of the Foreign Office, and, indeed, with Russian officials in general. They seemed not only to stand in awe of him, but to look toward him as "the eyes of a maiden to the hand of her mistress.'' I
Meantime, the arbitration tribunal was holding its sessions at Paris, and the American counsel were doing their best to secure justice for our country. The facts were on our side, and there seemed every reason to hope for a decision in our favor. A vital question was as to how extensive the closed zone for the seals about our islands should be. The United States showed that the nursing seals were killed by the Canadian poachers at a distance of from one to two hundred miles from the islands, and that killing ought not to be allowed within a zone of that radius; but, on the other hand, the effort of the British counsel was to make this zone as small as possible. They had even contended for a zone of only ten miles radius. But just at the nick of time Sir Robert Morier intervened at St. Petersburg. No one but himself and the temporary authorities of the Russian Foreign Office had, or could have had, any knowledge of his manœuver. By the means which his government gave him power to exercise, he in some way secured privately, from the underlings above referred to as in temporary charge of the Foreign Office, an agreement with Great Britain which practically recognized a closed zone of only thirty miles radius about the Russian islands. This fact was telegraphed just at the proper moment to the British representatives before the tribunal; and, as one of the judges afterward told me, it came into the case like a bomb. It came so late that any adequate explanation of Russia's course was impossible, and its introduction at that time was strenuously objected to by our counsel; but the British lawyers thus got the fact fully before the tribunal, and the tribunal naturally felt that in granting us a sixty-mile radius—double that which Russia had asked of Great Britain for
I now come back to the main point which has caused me to bring up this matter in these reminiscences. How was it that Great Britain obtained this victory? To what was it due? The answer is simple: it was due to the fact that the whole matter at St. Petersburg was sure to be decided, not by argument, but by "influence.'' Sir Robert Morier had what in the Tammany vernacular is called a "pull.'' His government had given him, as its representative, all the means necessary to have his way in this and all other questions like it; whereas the American Government had never given its representative any such means or opportunities. The British representative was an ambassador, and had a spacious, suitable, and well-furnished house in which he could entertain fitly and largely, and to which the highest Russian officials thought it an honor to be invited. The American representatives were simply ministers; from time immemorial had never had such a house; had generally no adequate place for entertaining; had to live in apartments such as they might happen to find vacant in various parts of the town—sometimes in very poor quarters, sometimes in better; were obliged to furnish them at their own expense; had, therefore, never been able to obtain
More than this, the British ambassador had adequate means furnished him for exercising political influence. The American representatives had not; they had been stinted in every way. The British ambassador had a large staff of thoroughly trained secretaries and attachés, the very best of their kind,—well educated to begin with, thoroughly trained afterward,—serving as antennæ for Great Britain in Russian society; and as the first secretary of his embassy he had no less a personage than Henry Howard, now Sir Henry Howard, minister at The Hague, one of the brightest, best-trained, and most experienced diplomatists in Europe. The American representative was at that time provided with only one secretary of legation, and he, though engaging and brilliant, a casual appointment who remained in the country only a few months. I had, indeed, secured a handsome and comfortable apartment, and entertained at dinner and otherwise the leading members of the Russian ministry and of the diplomatic corps, at a cost of more than double my salary; but the influence thus exercised was, of course, as nothing compared to that exercised by a diplomatist like Sir Robert Morier, who had every sort of resource at his command, who had been for perhaps forty years steadily in the service of his country, and had learned by long experience to know the men with whom he had to deal and the ways of getting at them. His power in St. Petersburg was felt in a multitude of ways: all officials at the Russian Foreign Office, from the highest to the lowest, naturally desired to be on good terms with him. They knew that his influence had become very great and that it was best to have his friendship; they loved especially to be invited to his dinners, and their families loved to be invited to his balls. He was a power. The question above referred to, of such importance to the United States, was not decided by argument, but simply by the weight of social and other influence, which counts
The action of the Russian authorities in the Behring Sea question, which is directly traceable to the superior policy of Great Britain in maintaining a preponderating diplomatic, political, and social influence at the Russian capital, cost our government a sum which would have bought suitable houses in several capitals, and would have given to each American representative a proper staff of assistants. I have presented this matter with reluctance, though I feel not the slightest responsibility for my part in it. I do not think that any right-minded man can blame
I am not at all in this matter "a man with a grievance''; for I knew what American representatives had to expect, and was not disappointed. My feeling is simply that of an American citizen whose official life is past, and who can look back dispassionately and tell the truth plainly.
This case is presented simply in the hope that it will do something to arouse thinking men in public life, and especially in the Congress of the United States, to provide at least a suitable house or apartment for the American representative in each of the more important capitals of the world, as all other great powers and many of the lesser nations have done. If I can aid in bringing about this result, I care nothing for any personal criticism which may be brought upon me.
See my chapter on the Venezuela Commission for the trick attempted by British agents in the first British Blue Book on that subject.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AS MINISTER TO RUSSIA—1892-1894
Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White | ||